


Be Sure Thou Prove My Love

by yanatya



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Standalone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-14
Updated: 2005-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yanatya/pseuds/yanatya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal/Inara angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Sure Thou Prove My Love

**Author's Note:**

> Post-series fic. Written for the [50 Ways To Leave Your Lover](http://frowl.org/50ways/index.html)s inter-fandom fiction project.

His eyes had never fully adjusted to the gloom of her planetside bedroom, but he could see enough.

In sleep, without her poise and voice and cosmetics to shield her, her cheek was as rounded as that of a young girl who hadn't yet lost her baby fat. Her skin was unblemished by suns or winds or years of hard living. Long lashes edged lids below a smooth forehead. Her curling hair was mussed and tangled without art or artifice.

She looked about fourteen years old.

No. No, no, no. She wasn't fourteen. All the things he'd done to her body in the last two hours proved he didn't think of her as a child.

******

_"Mal?" Her voice had been sharp when she'd opened the door. "This is a surprise…"_

******

He wasn't the kind to take up with just any loose woman, and he didn't take up with whores at all. He'd always assumed that a whore would hold something back during lovemaking, some unspoken nuance in her touch saying that she was working, not loving. Pleasuring, but not cherishing.

A whore's touch wasn't honest, and he was enough of a man to want the woman in his bed to desire him for his qualities, not his money.

But from that moment when she'd unexpectedly met his gaze, when they'd both heard the yes, now whispering between them, Inara hadn't acted like a whore. She'd thrown herself into their lovemaking with a desperate passion that had left him breathless.

******

_"Since you're here," she said, her less-than-friendly expression melting away into her usual serene mask, "let me make you some tea."_

******

It wasn't just her hands and mouth on his skin; it was all of her, all he knew of her, focused completely on him, or all she thought she knew of him. She'd been generous beyond belief with her ministrations, prolonging and heightening his pleasure, and when he'd turned the tables, she'd been unrestrained in her responses to the sensations he'd triggered.

He remembered with satisfaction the moment when his fingers had made her eyes widen in shock and pleasure. Right then, he'd done something to her that no other man had. Right at that moment, she had been his. All his.

Maybe that was the difference between a trained Companion and a whore.

******

_"We shouldn't--I..." She protested as he pinned her wrists above her head, pinned her thighs wide with his._

******

Or maybe it wasn't.

Which was why he was lying awake, wishing he could wake her and shake her and ask what the hell she'd been thinking. She did this for a living. She should know better.

He didn't wake her. Whatever he said would start an argument, and they'd argued too many times for him to think he'd ever accomplish anything by talking.

Instead, he listened to her soft sleeping breaths, inhaled the scent of her skin, and shut his eyes, recalling the light of revelation in hers as she'd climaxed, surprise mixed with rapture, her unwavering gaze forcing the most intimate connection.

******

_She screamed. "Mal! God, Mal!"_

******

He didn't know what she was offering. Still sleeping soundly, she nestled more firmly into the pillows on her side of the bed, and instinct made him gather her in his arms and tug her warm, damp body closer.

He lay next to her for a few minutes longer, making sure her breaths continued in and out, in and out, in a regular pattern. Then he slipped out of bed, tugged the covers up over her flawless shoulder, and picked his way out of the room, gathering his clothes as he went.

END  



End file.
